spent an entire part of his life making social commentarypaintings, and I think early on that’s what clearly appealedto me more than anything else.” Organized by MeadowsCuratorial Assistant Shelley DeMaria, the exhibitiondemonstrates the intrinsic duality of Alexander’s oeuvre:his focus on the natural world, and his sardonic take onhuman nature, particularly as it collides with the naturalworld. Despite the dichotomy, it could be argued that withAlexander it’s all nature—idyllic and Edenic, versus harsherafter-the-Fall realities. DeMaria comments, “When you lookat all these works together, the faces of the animals almosttake on a human personality, and they have a sense aboutthem that it’s more than just a wild animal. And then youlook at the people, and there’s something quite animalistic inthem. So altogether they meld into one very cohesive worldthat’s a little bit crazy, but lots of fun.”For his part, Alexander recalls with a laugh, “Therewas this article in the Los Angeles Times that said I painted‘nature at its grandest and man at his worst.’ And if youlook at every crane, every heron, every beautiful spoonbillthat I’ve ever painted, every one of them looks frightened,perplexed, or both, because of man’s encroachment. Thethings that I love most about nature are rapidly deterioratingbefore us. So of course that’s influenced my thinking, andthere’s a connection between the people in my boat, so tospeak, those figurative parodies of my fellow humans [“TheBoating Party,” oil on canvas, 45” x 48”], and the peoplewho are literally destroying the environment that I loveso much.” The exhibition is comprised of approximatelythirty works from the past ten years of the artist’s career,and includes large-scale drawings, large-scale paintings, anda gallery of smaller works. DeMaria notes, “As a curatoryou try to understand where the artist is coming from.With John’s very exaggerated, crazy looking people I had